Abstract : Thin films of hydrogels we study are chemical polymer networks covalently grafted on solid substrates. These versatile coatings allow the control of various interfacial properties such as responsive properties, wetting or mechanical properties. Here, thin films of stimuli-responsive hydrogels with temperature, light or electric field are the point of interest. The surface-attached gel films are synthesized by following a straightforward strategy based on thiol-ene click chemistry. The formation of the films is achieved by adding bifunctional thiol molecules as cross-linkers to the ene-reactive polymers on thiol-modified surfaces. This strategy allows us to obtain hydrogel films with a wide range of thickness and with the desired properties. We study the structure of surface-attached polyN-isopropylacrylamide gel films which show thermo-responsive properties. We determine the effect of confinement and constraints due to the surface-attachment on the swelling-collapse phase transition of hydrogels with two approaches: the one-dimension swelling normal to the surface using ellipsometry and neutron reflectivity and the in-plane observation of the free surface of the gel using AFM. New and complex hydrogel films are also developed by targeting the architecture of the polymer networks. Inspired from macroscopic hydrogels architecture, we design various architectures: multilayer gel films, interpenetrating networks IPN gel films and hybrid gel films.

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